Fault lines between Dollars and Dhamma

IN Sri Lanka, on a 24/7 basis the words of wisdom of Gautama Buddha are related in some place or another.

- By Mass L. Usuf

In over 12,000 temples spread across the rustic villages to the urbanised city, Dhamma values and traditions are encouraged by nearly 43,000 monks on a daily basis. Not to mention the hundreds of places alongside roads or at junctions, where the statue of Buddha is placed in an altar and the chanting of Karaniya Metta Sutta (words on loving-kindness) happens daily over loudspeakers.

In this great nation of ours, steeped in Dhamma and its nonviolence (ahimsa) teachings is it not disturbing to learn that almost none of the venerable monks have voiced their concern on the unprecedented genocide in Palestine? The Karaniya Metta Sutta is often recited to promote peace, well-being, and compassion (maithri) for mankind.

Where is the maithriya?

Compassion to mankind include Palestinians — the pregnant mother, the day-old infant in the crib, the blind and disabled person, the bedridden paralysed person, the playful little child, the curious youth, the mother and father, the aged grandmother, grandfather and granduncle. Each of them is being subjected to brutal and indiscriminate mass slaughter, starved to death, deliberately deprived of essentials like medicine, food, water, shelter, and basic human rights, leading to untold suffering and vulnerability. These words from the Sutta resonates:

“Even as a mother protects with her life Her child, her only child, So, with a boundless heart Should one cherish all living beings; Radiating kindness over the entire world”

Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi an American Buddhist monk, translator of Pali Buddhist texts, himself of Jewish ethnicity wrote in an article titled “No time for silence”: